View 819 Monday, April 07, 2014

But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it away from the fog of the controversy.

Nancy Pelosi. Former Speaker of the House of Representatives

Referring to the Affordable Health Care Act

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan. Period.

Barrack Obama, famously.

“…the only thing that can save us is if Kerry wins the Nobel Prize and leaves us alone.”

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon

I am being nibbled to death by rabbits, and I’m still involved in doing the taxes, but all is well.

Here is some good news from Dr. Jennifer Pournelle:

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I am writing to ask your assistance in getting the word out about UofSC’s first crowdfunding research campaign “Water From Oil: Can We Help Restore Iraq’s Marshes <https://experiment.com/cmarsh> ?”

Within three short weeks, we met our minimum fundraising goal (thanks to those of you who contributed!). We now have just seven days to raise the remainder, which will fund pilot lab analyses and an undergraduate research assistant.

I’m not spamming you to contribute (though all are welcome!); rather to ask you to forward this on to anyone you know who might have interest – and especially to listservs or other accounts that reach a wider audience. One last push this week will probably make all the difference.

If you’d like to learn more about crowdfunding, please attend my 9:30 am presentation at the USC Research Retreat <https://sam.research.sc.edu/registration/register.> on Friday. Also, the USC Times did a lovely piece earlier this week: you can read it below.

Thanks in advance for your help,

Jenny

.

I note that President Putin, in justifying his sending in his military to Crimea, taking Crimea away from Ukraine, and annexing it to Russia has used the precedent of the NATO intervention in Kosovo to demonstrate that he was acting within accepted International Law.

In about 1920 Kosovo was largely Serbian in composition. There has never been any provision for legal immigration from Albania to Kosovo., which has been Serbian for a thousand years. Of course during the Moslem occupation of the Balkans, Albanian and Bosnian Moslems – ethnically more or less indistinguishable from Serbians and Croats, but converts to Islam – were the tax collectors for the Turkish rulers, and during some centuries the taxes collected were young male Christians who were taken as tribute to Istanbul where they were forcibly converted to Islam and became the slave soldiers and administrators of the Turkish state: they were known as Janissaries. This practice generated blood feuds which last to this day.

Sometime after the breakup of Yugoslavia Kosovo had acquired a large Albanian population. There was civil unrest, and NATO intervened in aid of the Albanian population. Eventually with NATO armed assistance Kosovo declared itself independent of Serbia. It remains in that status now, although the ethnic Albanian militia known as the  Kosovo Liberation Army has been accused of ethnic cleansing of Serbs in the formerly Serbian province, and some areas are held by Serbs who consider the province part of Serbia.

From the Russian view, Serbs are Slavs, and Russia is on record as supporting Slavs. It was the Austrian threat to Serbia following the assassination of the Austrian Crown Prince that caused Russian interference, and later mobilization, in 1914; at which point Germany, fearing a war on two fronts and very fearful of a mobilized Russia, began The Great War.

Note that Russia has not before recognized the legitimacy of NATO intervention in Kosovo; whether Putin now does so is not clear. It is clear that Russia has not forgotten its Slavic interests in the Balkans; and of course it is obvious that Russia is concerned about ethnic Russians in Ukraine and Moldavia.

It is not clear why the United States adheres to the NATO treaty. The NATO countries, minus the United States, have a far larger economy and military potential than Russia. NATO more and more is concerned with the territorial disputes of Europe, and the American interests in such matters are not clear at all.

How is this even vaguely legal under the current interpretations of the First Amendment to the Constitution of The United State of America?

http://www.infowars.com/federal-snipers-train-guns-on-family-for-filming-cattle/

The late Mr. Justice Hugo Black wrote “The First Amendment’s language leaves no room for inference that abridgments of speech and press can be made just because they are slight. That Amendment provides, in simple words, that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." I read "no law . . . abridging" to mean no law abridging.“– Concurring opinion, Smith v. California <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._California> , 361 U.S. 147 (1959).

Or am I just hopelessly out-of-date these days?

John R. Strohm

I have no source for this other than the link given, but it seems to me that the BLM needs some fundamental lessons on the law of the Constitution. Surely we have not come to need guillotines in the public squares?  Surely someone in Congress might find this interesting enough to subpoena the people in charge of armed response on public land?  I had not known that the mere Federal ownership of land took it out of the Constitution’s jurisdiction.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View 818 Saturday, April 05, 2014

But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it away from the fog of the controversy.

Nancy Pelosi. Former Speaker of the House of Representatives

Referring to the Affordable Health Care Act

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

There are few solid facts about the Affordable Health Care Act, but some stand out. President Obama has referred to it as “ObamaCare” so I presume this term is no longer considered objectionable and insulting.

The chief argument in favor of ObamaCare was that tens of millions of Americans did not have healthcare insurance. In order for a man to love his country, his country ought to be lovable; and this is an unacceptable number of people to be without this vital necessity.

The number of people whose health care policies were cancelled because they did not offer one or more of the required features of ObamaCare is 6 million.

The number of people who have as of early April 2014 signed up for ObamaCare is 7.1 million. This is usually given as 7.1 million people!!!

These numbers do not lead me to the conclusion that ObamaCare is successful as of April 5, 2014.

Peggy Noonan has more to say on the subject:

Noonan: A Catastrophe Like No Other

The president tries to put a good face on ObamaCare.

As I say, put aside the argument, step back and view the thing at a distance. Support it or not, you cannot look at ObamaCare and call it anything but a huge, historic mess. It is also utterly unique in the annals of American lawmaking and government administration.

Its biggest proponent in Congress, the Democratic speaker of the House, literally said—blithely, mindlessly, but in a way forthcomingly—that we have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it. It is a cliché to note this. But really, Nancy Pelosi‘s statement was a historic admission that she was fighting hard for something she herself didn’t understand, but she had every confidence regulators and bureaucratic interpreters would tell her in time what she’d done. This is how we make laws now.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304441304579479700454846082?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304441304579479700454846082.html

Of course there are rational arguments against what Ms. Noonan says.

Peggy Noonan Lifts Head From Bar, Slurs Out More Lies About Obamacare, Passes Back Out

Read more at http://wonkette.com/545768/peggy-noonan-lifts-head-from-bar-slurs-out-more-lies-about-obamacare-passes-back-out#GRFYD9oXZKoszLi4.99

But there remain the numbers. Six million policies cancelled because they failed to offer the minimum requirements guaranteed by the Affordable Care Act, and thus do not qualify to exempt you from being fined for not having a policy. 7.1 Million Signed Up!!! Tens of millions need health care insurance and do not have it. I do not see how this is a success; and yes, we have passed the bill, and now we can see what’s in it. Ms. Noonan says it is a mess. I say that so far it has reduced the number of uninsured by no more than two million, so that if the need for covering tens of millions of uninsured is great, it cannot have made much progress toward that; and the enrollment period is ending.

And polls show that now that the public knows what is in the Act, a lot of the American people don’t much care for it.

Writing this leads to another question: Why was “Add to Dictionary” greyed out when Word spell check decided that ObamaCare was not an acceptable word? Of course I could go to Office/word options/ proofing / custom dictionaries, choose the standard Custom dictionary, and manually add ObamaCare to the word list; that took care of it.

.

Did Everyone Miss This?

I saw this and it was on the news, but there was little discussion of it.  I saw the point mentioned again today in WSJ and figured I’d email you since I never saw you explicitly mention it either.  Perhaps, it seemed topical, but I’ll show you that it’s a pattern: 

According to WSJ:

<.>

Its biggest proponent in Congress, the Democratic speaker of the House, literally said that we have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it. It is a cliché to note this. But really, Nancy Pelosi’s statement was a historic admission that she was fighting hard for something she herself didn’t understand, but she had every confidence regulators and bureaucratic interpreters would tell her in time what she’d done. This is how we make laws now.

</>

http://goo.gl/lss0z4

This is how we make laws, now?  No, excuse me, but this has been going on for some time.  In fact, the only thing I ever learned from Michael Moore’s work is that fact.  In his sensational film Fahrenheit 911, we note the following exchange between Moore and a Congressman:

<.>

[Question:]  How could Congress pass this Patriot Act without even reading it?

[Answer:] Sit down, my son. We don’t read most of the bills. Do you really know what that would entail…if we were to read every bill that we passed? Well, the good thing, it would slow down the legislative process.

</>

The congressman’s name escapes me, but it’s mentioned in the film. 

We’ve been making laws this way and that means Congress is not doing its job and is allowing others to do its job for it.  And they’re crying about being underpaid:  http://goo.gl/pGKQXf

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

We do know that several key provisions in the copyright act were inserted into the bill by a Congressional staffer who later left government employ to become an official of a publishing association; and no Congressman can be found who knowingly voted for those provision. Yet they remain law.

Yesterday’s Kelly Freas Cover

I had to look this up.  That Kelly Freas cover was used again on News of the World, an album by Queen.  I used to play that pretty often; it was one of my father’s only decent pieces of vinyl.  They redid the piece, slightly, so the people the robot killed were members of the band.  

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ea/Queen_News_Of_The_World.png

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Really neat video technology for seeing the unseeable

MIT has developed a neat technology for analyzing video and enhancing the otherwise undetectable changes. For example, blood flow changing the color of skin, pulsing of small veins, a sleeping baby breathing, the hot air rising from a candle flame, the tiny position shift that occurs in the camera body when the camera’s shutter snaps.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/149623-mit-releases-open-source-software-that-reveals-invisible-motion-and-detail-in-video

Worth watching both videos. There is very little duplication. The first video is a more public-friendly discussion and demonstration. The second video was a presentation at SIGGraph 2012, so it is slightly more technical (but not boringly so) and has more details.

The algorithm is patent-pending but they have released code under the MIT technology has been released under an open-source license for non-commercial purposes. The license provides information on how to request a license for commercial purposes.

Besides the medical monitoring they demo, I can see uses in factories or power plants where a camera could watch, say, a motor or turbine shaft, or other equipment, and monitor for changes in vibration over time. Also for other mechanical processes where it would be useful to see what subtle vibration or position shifting is happening. For example, during prototyping it would be useful to see the subtle motions and flexing that happen during use before they manifest over time in the field as worn parts or metal fatigue. Makes it easier to know where to beef up or take steps to reduce friction.

–Gary P

This seems interesting and probably worth discussion. I am, as you have probably surmised, deep in the heart of Taxes…

Surprised?

I fear this is one of those times where people would say "he goes off sometimes". But, I assure you I wrote this in the best of spirits and I mean well. =)

You asked if we’re surprised with the lack of cooperation in space because of Ukraine. We cannot respond, appropriately; so we’ll respond inappropriately? The need to respond demonstrates a lack of confidence, which in the left means a lack of power. They always pretend to be what they’re not; when they’re scared to pretend you know they’re in trouble. And, since they’re in power, that means we’re in trouble.

Basic, populist presentments on Game Theory: http://goo.gl/ttWnlG

This article offers some practical reasons why this behavior — that of "the judge" — leads to death. The "judge" kills deals because he’s an idealist and cannot accept what is unfair. That’s what this administration is doing. Ukraine is not fair; we must kill the space deal.

Eventually, "the judge" can’t work with anyone because nobody does things his way and he cuts himself off from everyone. Even the "laid back" person cannot stay in symbiosis with "the judge". Only the spiteful person and the laid back person can maintain a relationship; all other types split — according to this article about this experiment. So we’ll have a society of mean people and victims, I suppose. It’s not a great thought, but it’s not new and it’s expressed in the Norse paradigm through the Icelandic and Norwegian rune poems on the rider; the Anglo-Saxon poems are more Christianized than even the Norwegian; therefore, contaminated. My point is that this has been observed for some time.

However, in 2014 we’re being ruled by judges and homo economicuses in 2014. Both of these types die because they can’t cooperate or force the cooperation of others effectively. Do you want to follow the dead people? I never have. But, take heart, these homo economicus and judge losers are going to die! And by die, I mean they will no longer be part of the human species as we evolve. We just need to keep our heads until this sociobiological crisis abates. I always thought Nietzsche’s superman was a natural process that would occur as the species aged; I always thought people like Hitler were, erroneously, attempting to speed up that process for their own, self aggrandizing, purposes. You were right, despair is a sin!

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

An interesting thesis.

Google Is Having Trouble Trying to Trademark the Word ‘Glass’ 

* By

* Jacob Gershman

Google <http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=GOOG> GOOG +0.60% <http://blogs.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=GOOG?mod=inlineTicker> is trying to register the word “Glass” as a trademark for its computer-powered glasses <http://www.google.com/glass/start/> . But so far, the company and the U.S. trademark office aren’t seeing eye to eye.

Google, which has successfully trademarked the term “Google Glass,” submitted an application last year for a trademark on just the single word “Glass,” displayed with the same futuristic font <http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/0403glass.pdf> used in its marketing campaign. But the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is holding up the company’s bid.

In a letter to the company <http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/googleglassuspto.pdf> last fall, a trademark examiner raised two main objections. One concern was that the trademark was too similar to other existing or pending computer software trademarks that contain the word “glass,” creating a risk of consumer confusion.

 

And now I am back to work.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View 818 Friday, April 04, 2014

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

“…the only thing that can save us is if Kerry wins the Nobel Prize and leaves us alone.”

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon

I am deep into the annual ritual of Doing The Taxes, and things will be spotty for a while.

.

We made the front page!

Jennifer Pournelle<http://www.sc.edu/uofsc/uofsc_images/story_callout_images/2014/callout_04_pournelle.jpg>

Online crowdfunding offers alternatives for researchers needing smaller budgets <http://www.sc.edu/uofsc/stories/2014/03_research_crowdfunding_pournelle.php#.Uz68T_k7syp>

Jennifer Pournelle is the first to use Experiment.com in partnership with the university’s Office of Research to crowdfund her research trip to Iraq.

Jennifer

Hurrah.

Skydiver vs. meteorite.

<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/10742854/Meteorite-narrowly-misses-Norwegian-skydiver.html>

———

Roland Dobbins

Unique!

Six clicks: 3D printing industry predictions for the next 5 years zdnet

By Charlie Osborne <http://www.zdnet.com/meet-the-team/us/charlie-osborne/> for iGeneration <http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/> | April 4, 2014 — 09:00 GMT (02:00 PDT)

*

According to Founder & Designer at Bits to Atoms & Shapeways 3D printing advocate Duann Scott, the technology which could revolutionize the manufacturing industry is being held back by one thing: patents.

Scott says that in February this year, key patents which prevented advances in 3D printing and limited competition expired. The technology, known as laser sintering <http://www.me.utexas.edu/news/2012/0712_sls_history.php> — is a low-cost manufacturing process used in 3D printing, and allows for low-volume product creation.

The importance of laser sintering in 3D printing cannot be expressed enough, as the manufacturing technique produces goods that can be sold on as finished products. Not only this, but potential to produce low volumes of product has given birth to companies like Shapeways, who print designs for those who cannot afford their own machines.

The patent system was intended to promote the useful arts and sciences. It now promotes legal fees, and employs lawyers. It is clear that something needs to be done, but I have seen no politically credible proposals that even approach rationality.

Madison feared that America would fall into the hands of “the faction”. We are governed by political employee unions who seek higher wages, tenure forever, and large pensions, and make it impossible to be elected without their support. The Plaintiff Bar controls the legal system including the largest factor in health care costs, malpractice insurance. Historically the only way to upset these iron triangles is with war; revolution doesn’t really get rid of them, only replaces them with something else. Japan and Germany lost wars and actually got a reset in government, and moreover were occupied by proconsuls who actually believed in free enterprise.

Capitalism tends to concentrate power. The United States avoided that Marxian inevitability with the Sherman anti-trust act and trust busting, but that was captured by the bureaucracy and used as a shakedown mechanism to punish companies like Microsoft who did not have enormous Washington lobbyists who were generous to public employees as well as to politicians; the perks Microsoft did not give to White House and Congressional staffers were probably more instrumental in filing the Microsoft anti-trust farce as the lack of campaign contributions. The suit was successful, and Microsoft which had no lobby office – the Washington office was sales office prior to the suit – now has one of the largest and most generous Washington lobby offices in the area.

But we have no real lobby for the public interest, as illustrated by the above story. The Iron Law prevails.

The Problem With Self-Driving Cars: They Don’t Cry business week

By Kyle Stock <http://www.businessweek.com/authors/52926-kyle-stock> April 03, 2014

Sure we can make a self-driving car, but can we make a self-driving car with feelings?

Noah Goodall, a University of Virginia scientist, asks that question in a new study <http://people.virginia.edu/%7Enjg2q/ethics.pdf> of autonomous driving. Goodall (no doubt a big fan of the Terminator movies) isn’t so much worried about driving as he is crashing—can robot cars be taught to make empathetic, moral decisions when an accident is imminent and unavoidable?

It’s a heady but valid question. Consider a bus swerving into oncoming traffic. A human driver may react differently than a sentient car, for example, if she noticed the vehicle was full of school kids. Another person may swerve differently than a robot driver to prioritize the safety of a spouse in the passenger seat.

This stuff is far more complicated than calibrating safe following distances or even braking for a loose soccer ball. Goodall writes: “There is no obvious way to effectively encode complex human morals in software.”

According to Goodall, the best options for car builders are “deontology,” an ethical approach in which the car is programmed to adhere to a fixed set of rules, or “consequentialism,” where it is set to maximize some benefit—say, driver safety over vehicle damage. But those approaches are problematic, too. A car operating in those frameworks may choose a collision path based on how much the vehicles around it are worth or how high their safety ratings are—which hardly seems fair. And should cars be programmed to save their own passengers at the expense of greater damage to those in other vehicles?

In a crash situation, human drivers are processing a staggering amount of information in fractions of a second. The computer is doing the same thing, but much faster, and its decisions are effectively already made—set months or years earlier when the vehicle was programmed. It just has to process; it doesn’t have to think.

The apparent middle ground is a kind of hybrid model in which the car does the driving and a human can intervene and override the autonomy in a sticky situation. Goodall points out, though, that drivers on autopilot may not be as vigilant as they should be—particularly coming generations who may learn to drive in sentient cars.

Goodall’s main point is that engineers better start thinking about this stuff, because crashes will be unavoidable even with perfectly functioning robot chauffeurs. In addition to fine-tuning radar systems and steering, the self-driving wizards at such places as Google (GOOG <http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?ticker=GOOG> ) should be working on “ethical crashing algorithms” and artificial intelligence software in which self-driving cars learn from human feedback.

He also recommends that engineers and lawyers put their heads together to come up with some kind of standard. The current policies <http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nhtsa.gov%2Fstaticfiles%2Frulemaking%2Fpdf%2FAutomated_Vehicles_Policy.pdf&ei=ZGU9U6eMOLXLsATEvoGgDw&usg=AFQjCNHroCCk4A6TedxkDj_uc7qgsmC_fA&sig2=ImLpvzTx3U1HBikFUCiwGQ&bvm=bv.63934634,d.cWc> from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration don’t drift into ethics at all.

As for automakers, it’s easy to envision Goodall’s ideas informing a whole new set of programmable driving modes: “D+” for protecting the driver at all costs, “P” for saving pregnant passengers, and “S” for selfless decision-making.

Science fiction authors have been wrestling with this problem for many decades; one of my first science fiction memories was this Kelly Freas cover:

"If this Administration wants to prove to Congress and the international community that they are serious about this process they must immediately bring an end to Net Neutrality. Telling Congress and the international community that they are serious about relinquishing control over the IANA [Internet Assigned Numbers Authority] contract <http://www.ntia.doc.gov/page/iana-functions-purchase-order> , while simultaneously having the FCC working to promote Net Neutrality is disingenuous at best and will continue to weaken our international position."

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.)

I fear American control over the Internet, but I fear more its control by a UN bureaucracy.

“The biggest issue we have in government is the one thing no one talks about,” McCrory said. “It’s how to get the work done in the most efficient, effective and quality way. I’m CEO in addition to being chairman of the board as governor and my biggest issue is being hamstrung by policies and politics which don’t allow me to operate in the most efficient and productive way and that includes paying the people who are really good.”

He shared the story of trying to find an economic forecaster.

“I can’t find the talent right now. My health and human services secretary says ‘Please get me some talent. Please get me some forecasters. Please get me some technical people.’ [Information systems] people are very, very difficult to find. If I get a good [information systems] person, they’re stolen within a year by the private sector.”

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R)

His concern apparently is over the pay scale of government workers, although I have not heard that there is any shortage of “qualified” i.e. credentialed applicants for government jobs. The biggest problem is that we have an education system indistinguishable from one imposed by a foreign power after winning a war with the US.

By law, stock exchanges must deliver price data to the public at the same time that it goes to brokers, lest the brokers be able to play the old bucket shop scams described in the 1940 book The Big Con (source of The sting and a dozen other con man movies). In practice, stock exchanges sell high speed access to the public data, as well as high speed access to the bidding floor; meanwhile the data travels by oxcart – well, by slow speed data connections – out to the networks and other sources of ticker tape crawl. I can recall when growing up in the radio business that we had an actual ticker tape in the station office (along with a new printer for UP and AP news feeds). Many brokerage offices did not get the ticker tape feed – they were not all that cheap – and it was easy to imagine scams making use of having a few minutes head start on the stock price information. Needless to say I never did anything with that, but today’s High Speed Traders do: when they see an order for a block of stock large enough to drive the price up a bit, they can take advantage of that to buy it first, then sell it do the incoming order. Of course they can’t do that themselves: it must be done on a very high speed computer with superfast Internet connections, and the whole thing is done by algorithms. I’ve thought of a neat scam using hacks to get into a super high speed trader’s account, but I doubt I’ll write a story about it. I can’t imagine any moral qualms about taking Goldman Sacksyou for a few tens of millions of dollars…

Jerry,

Conceding the Space Station?

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/04/02/nasa-suspends-ties-with-russian-govt-officials-over-ongoing-crisis-in-crimea/?intcmp=latestnews

Jim

Surprised?

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View 818 Wednesday, April 02, 2014

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan. Period.

Barrack Obama, famously.

“the only thing that can save us is if Kerry wins the Nobel Prize and leaves us alone.”

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon

Get Ready for the Internet Robber Barons

If the United Nations ends up in charge, it would have a chokehold on the global economy.

By

Karl Borden

The world may see history repeat itself with the Internet, and the unintended consequences are likely to be profound. The United Nations has long craved the power to tax, and the Obama administration’s decision to give up U.S. oversight of the domain-name system and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, may end up giving the U.N. that power.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303725404579461822619207730?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303725404579461822619207730.html

There is considerably more, but the mere thought of UN Bureaucrats, responsible to no one, having control over Internet domain names and able to levy fees on their control and use should strike terror into every heart except a UN employee. And this is not an April 1 story…

‘To make matters worse, some suggest Israel gave this information to Moscow in exchange for Russia allowing Soviet Jews to immigrate to Israel.’

<http://thediplomat.com/2014/04/dont-release-jonathan-pollard/>

——-

Roland Dobbins

More excerpts:

And indeed one of the major reasons being given for why Pollard should not be released is it would send the wrong message to Snowden and other intelligence officers contemplating discussing classified information in the future. This in itself should be a strong enough reason for not granting Pollard clemency.

Still, it is hardly the only reason why President Obama should not release Pollard, as Secretary of State John Kerry is reportedly urging him to do. Another closely related reason is that it would be a slap in the face to the overwhelming majority of U.S. intelligence officers and other national security officials who are not contemplating leaking classified information. These individuals work tirelessly to protect the United States and Edward Snowden’s treason has already been highly demoralizing to honest national security professionals in the United States. To pardon Pollard so soon after Snowden’s case surfaced would be the ultimate insult to these individuals.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/593833-yellowstone-volcano-eruption-in-2014-some-believe-animals-are-fleeing-park-see-it-as-an-alert/

The more you know about the Yellowstone Caldera and ash pits, the more frightening the place becomes; but I suspect that animals  are fleeing poachers and wolves rather than have some extra sensory perception of  oncoming eruptions.

Dr. Pournelle,

There was a counterpoint opinion about the effect of changing responsibility for ICANN given by a founding internet engineer, Vint Cerf, in a Leo LaPorte interview today on TWiT.tv. There is no link up on their site yet, but the interview was a special report and very well done. What I got from the interview is that ICANN is operated with limited powers as a trust, and is seeking proposals for opening that up to another, potentially foreign operator but with the same constraints. It would seem that some of the dire predictions sent to you may be a little on the alarmist side, at least from Mr. Cerf’s perspective.

-d

I am not familiar with that TWIT, but my concern is that once this is in the hands of the UN, who has control over what it will attempt to do?  A dollar a year per domain registry is not unreasonable, and who can keep them from imposing it?  The system we have works; but why would the UN operate it the way we do?  Bureaucracies are like that.  See the Iron Law.

Another shooting incident at Fort Hood. The Army is unable to protect itself: if you want to murder people, you need access to a military base or a school; on either case you will be assured that someone will have disarmed anyone able to protect himself or comrades, so you may proceed as you will.  Just as it is generally safe to rob landing passengers from aircraft. This is to assure the safety of the disarmed troopers. One might have thought that this approach would have been questioned after the Mad Muslim Psychiatrist opened fire on his unarmed comrades five years ago.

2300: the incident is officially over. A combat veteran suffering from what used to be called shell shock got into a dispute and began shooting. Three or four are dead, and many more wounded. Once again an armed man was able to kill a number of trained soldiers because they were disarmed and he knew they had been disarmed.  There needs to be a better way to run military posts.

Given that the Mad Major was allowed to do psychiatric counseling of combat veterans and those being deployed for the first time, even though he had spoken of jihad in medical seminars and had given plenty of warning that he had loose screws, it is hard to imagine the psychiatric environment at Fort Hood where this trooper was being treated for PTSD, which we hardly understand any better than we understood shell shock. Everyone was afraid of offending the Mad Muslim Traitor Psychiatrist, and of course offending him would have been a great disaster.  It would have been politically incorrect.  Instead we had a “workplace incident”, in which a jihadist tried to save his Afghani co-religionists by killing American GI’s being sent to enforce the edicts of the Mayor of Kabul. It was not an act of combat by a traitor, but merely a “workplace incident”, yet we will execute him for it (not by firing squad or hanging, apparently. He doesn’t get to dance Danny Deever.  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176154

I sometimes manage to miss important mail due to other distractions.  I generally try to get back to everything.  This one is topical:

A Tetrad of Lunar Eclipses

A total lunar eclipse on April 15th marks the beginning of a remarkable

series of eclipses, all visible from North America.

VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gzgSuJM5O8

The lecture also does a good job of explaining eclipses; it ought to be shown in every school at some point.  And on April 15 you can see a total Lunar eclipse if you like.

Hi, Jerry. The upcoming lunar eclipse is on April 15, yes, but only because NASA runs on GMT. For those of us WATCHING the eclipse, it’ll be late in the evening of April 14. When you get up on April 15, it’ll be long over.

——–

Ken Mitchell

Ho. I didn’t pay close enough attention I guess.   So it is about 11 PM PDT in California on the 14th that we need to start watching?

Hi, Jerry. You write: “Ho. I didn’t pay close enough attention I guess. So it is about 11 PM PDT in California on the 14th that we need to start watching?”

Yup; the U1 time, the beginning of the total phase of the eclipse, is at 05:58 GMT on the 15th, so 22:58 on the 14th, for those of us in the Pacific time zone. The sub-point of the Moon will be directly south of California; if we were on Standard time instead of DST, the total eclipse would begin 90 seconds before midnight.

http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/LEplot/LEplot2001/LE2014Apr15T.pdf

——–

Ken Mitchell

And by coincidence, I got this today.

The Planetary Society <http://support.planetary.org/site/R?i=QVLy4DoYB6sUXQb6sgkR6g>

Dear J.,

In the 42 years since the last Apollo mission, humans have not flown beyond low Earth orbit. The capability to go back to or even beyond the Moon does not yet exist. President Obama adopted the flexible path proposed by the 2009 (Augustine) Committee to Review U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans by proposing NASA plan a series of steps into the Solar System – reaching a near-Earth asteroid by 2025, the vicinity of Mars in the 2030s and landing on Mars in the early 2040s.

Even the first step in that plan is beyond the capabilities of current space systems unless the near-Earth asteroid is redirected from its natural orbit to one closer to Earth, around the Moon. The robotic Asteroid Redirection Mission (ARM) is a new idea now proposed by NASA to enable human space flight to go beyond the Moon and start on the path to Mars. The proposal has generated both enthusiasm and skepticism – some question its cost, some think it is a detour on the way to Mars or back to the Moon, while some see it as the only practical way to revitalize NASA and get human space exploration started again.

Join a panel of three renowned astronauts as they discuss the future of human spaceflight:

* Tom Jones – Scientist, Author, Pilot and Space Shuttle Astronaut

* Garrett Reisman – DragonRider Program Manager, SpaceX and Space Shuttle Astronaut

* Rusty Schweickart – Chairman Emeritus, B612 Foundation and Apollo Astronaut

Moderator: Louis Friedman – Executive Director, Emeritus – The Planetary Society

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

8:00 pm to 9:30 pm

Beckman Auditorium – Caltech

This event will be broadcast at http://ustream.tv/caltech <http://support.planetary.org/site/R?i=yRUoZ_bgbNnBy3m3ad8XUA> .

No registration is required for this free event and parking after 6pm near the auditorium is free as well. Seating is available on a first come, first served basis.

Directions, parking and additional information may be found at http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/index.html <http://support.planetary.org/site/R?i=dXYebJ4wL8e_OMxtKk8zzA> .

This event is sponsored by the Keck Institute for Space Studies and The Planetary Society.

Hope to see you there!

<http://support.planetary.org/site/PixelServer?j=6LTUDd7b9JGGOOfOMrxHMw>

Footer<http://support.planetary.org/images/content/pagebuilder/social-media.jpg>

 

The Planetary Society

85 South Grand,

Pasadena, CA 91105

Planetary.org <http://support.planetary.org/site/R?i=BGfAR4NehA8K2aqGj0K3EQ>

Although I pay dues, I don’t interact much with the planetary society. My last experiences with them was Carl Sagan arguing for more robotic exploration and abandoning manned space exploration. Making the universe safe for robots.  Larry Niven told Saga “Carl, I hope you realize that every time you get a convert , you lose support for space exploration. People don’t hold ticker tape parades for robots.”  I continued to support going back to the Moon. To Stay.

(Actually that was hardly my last contact with them, and I do tend to support the Planetary Society since we need probes to study asteroids and planets until we can learn how to get people living up there; at the moment I really can’t guarantee to keep humans alive on a trip to Mars. Space is a dangerous place. The way to learn how to live there is to go to a safer place: a Moon Colony.)

I know how to build a Lunar Colony and it would probably make money. Capitalization would be large but not great in comparison to money frittered away since Apollo. For what we have spent since Apollo we ought to be half way to Alpha Centauri by now; certainly we ought to have a Mars Colony as well as a Lunar Colony.  But that’s another story.  We could have an asteroid mining civilization by 2040.  The one I postulated in 1985 could exist now had we built it. But that too is another story.

And I have this discouraging message which I have not had time to analyze:

http://www.spacenewsfeed.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=723:misleading-mineral-may-have-resulted-in-overestimate-of-water-in-moon&catid=9:news&Itemid=114

And the hits just keep coming from Washington:

‘Given Russia’s ongoing violation of Ukraine¹s sovereignty and territorial integrity, until further notice, the U.S. Government has determined that all NASA contacts with Russian Government representatives are suspended, unless the activity has been specifically excepted.’

<http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/2/5574896/nasa-suspends-contracts-with-russia>

————–

Roland Dobbins

I presume that at some point we will have officially abandoned the Space Station and the Cosmonauts can claim it as flotsam? 

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.